Chapter 18: Into the Fire

Hamish walked up to his mother and took the cuffs out of her hand.

She smiled.

"Good," she said. "Now the girl."

He held them a moment, heavy and black.

Then Finlay wrenched his shoulder out of her grip, jumped off the rock, and ran straight at me.

He grabbed two fistfuls of my fur and pushed his face into my neck.

"You came," he said. "Yvaine, you came."

I pressed my head against his chest, and he laughed and cried at the same time.

Beatrix's smile fell off her face.

Hamish had not moved.

"Wardens," he said. "Take her."

They closed around her.

She did not fight, and she did not say a word.

Across the stream the Hale elder sat his gray horse and looked at the scene on the bank, the old Luna, the wolf and the boy.

"The writ is withdrawn," he said stiffly. "Hale takes no part in this."

He wheeled his horse around and rode back the way he'd come, and his riders followed, and the stream ran empty.

Linnea met us at the top of the path with a bundle of clothes.

I shifted behind the cedars with my teeth chattering, and she held my sweater out to me with her eyes turned politely away.

"You were beautiful," she said.

"I was a wolf."

"You were beautiful, though."

By noon the whole pack was in the hall.

Hamish stood at the great hearth.

Beatrix stood between two wardens at the foot of the bench, without her cane.

The eldest elder rapped for silence.

"Alpha," he said. "You have something to say to the pack."

Hamish held up the cuffs.

"My mother put these on Yvaine MacAulay while she gave birth to my son," he said. "I stood in the hall and let her."